The cup and the cross.
As I considered a blog topic for this week it’s hard to get past what saturates the news, fills our minds, and inhabits nearly everything we do. It’s the age of COVID-19.
Nearly every blog post I follow gives opinions, offers advice or simply covers how the virus is impacting their lives. There is something cathartic about doing that. Misery loves company? We are in uncharted territory. As I mentioned in last week’s post, I consider myself incredibly fortunate. My husband and I are socially distancing ourselves from others and have found it pretty easy to do so. We remain healthy, with food and other essentials in good supply.
Our extended family is good and we stay in touch with phone calls, emails and texts. I’ve made masks for all of them which the granddaughters seem to enjoy. At present our circumstances amount to minor inconveniences. The angst comes from thinking about others in far less ideal situations.
That’s where I worry and feel so helpless. I’m not an overly religious person, but I find myself reaching for the rosary everyday and dedicating each decade to a certain plea. I ask that my husband and family remain safe and healthy. There’s a decade said for a friend whose husband recently lost his battle with cancer. I don’t know how they will handle funeral and burial details. I know she is grieving, but we feel reluctant to take food or to give a much needed hug.
I pray a decade for all the health care workers risking their own lives to help fight this virus. My own sister works at a Veteran’s Hospital where to date there are no confirmed cases of the virus. But the community there has become a hot spot because a number of workers at the local meat-packing plant have tested positive.
And certainly I pray for all who have been touched by this vicious virus. Those who have died, for their families, and for those who are suffering from it.
In the midst of Holy Week when the focus is on the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, many in our world are going through their own form of suffering. Jesus didn’t look forward to the fate that awaited him. In fact, he asked his Father to let that “cup” pass him by. It didn’t. He carried the cross he was given. Neither did the virus pass by the millions who are struggling with it. Try as we might, we simply can’t ignore or alleviate the suffering they are enduring.
Pope Francis said it is not that God has sent this virus upon us as judgment of us. Rather, he challenges us to see how God will judge our response to it. Just as Jesus asked that the “cup be passed away from him,” we ask to to be spared. But if we’re not, what will our response be? What is our response now to our isolation? The answers lie within ourselves. But I believe the suffering of Jesus gives us guidance and hope.